Rick Santorum Was Right about Mitt Romney and Healthcare

The turning point in Sen. Rick Santorum’s surprisingly successful primary campaign arrived during a January debate in Florida, where Santorum underscored Mitt Romney’s vulnerability on the healthcare issue:

Think about what that means going up against Barack Obama, who, you are going to claim, “Well, top-down government-run medicine at the federal level doesn’t work work and we should repeal it,” and he’s going to say, “Wait a minute, Governor. You just said that top-down government-run medicine in Massachusetts works well.” Folks, we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom… Those are not the clear contrasts we need if we’re going to defeat Barack Obama…

As Business Insider’s Grace Wyler noted at the time, “Mitt Romney was finally forced to play some serious defense…”

The healthcare issue itself was tangential to Santorum’s rise; social conservatives’ discontent with Romney ran far deeper than that. But it was during exchange that Santorum gained traction and became the most credible Not-Romney.

At this stage of the general-election campaign, it’s worth asking: Was Santorum right? Does the nomination of Romney effectively “give away” the healthcare issue for Republicans?

Actually, the — chief justice, in his opinion, made it very clear that, at the state level — states have the power to put in place mandates. They don’t need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional. And — and as a result, Massachusetts’ mandate was a mandate, was a penalty, was described that way by the legislature and by me. And so it stays as it was.

Sympathizers may object that the Chief Justice John Roberts put Romney in an awkward position by wiping out the federalism argument in favor of Massachusetts’ mandate — which is true as far as it goes. Yet Santorum’s broader point was that it should not have mattered how the Supreme Court ruled on Obamacare; a Republican who hadn’t been previously tainted would have been able to command the healthcare issue independently of any help or hindrance from the judiciary.

None of this is to say that healthcare has become an advantage for Democrats. Rather, it is to suggest the issue has a become a wash — a non-advantage for Republicans. In a close election, it seems to me that could prove quite significant.

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4 Responses to Rick Santorum Was Right about Mitt Romney and Healthcare

The GOP is stuck. The base wants to get rid of Obamacare, but there are certainly a large number of voters who want some kind of reform to healthcare. Is Romney in a position to offer an alternative that will satisfy the base and satisfy the demand for reform? He can try to keep all the focus on Obamacare’s negatives, but sooner or later his own voters, not independent who favor reform, are going to want to know what his alternative might be. There’s a slight advantage for Obama in all this, as he can claim to be doing something and send a single message to his base and independents, while Romney has to contradict himself every time he talks about this. That Obamacare isn’t really popular and is nobody’s first-choice policy, except the insurance companies’, is a weakness, but one Mitt can’t exploit.

“None of this is to say that healthcare has become an advantage for Democrats. Rather, it is to suggest the issue has a become a wash — a non-advantage for Republicans. In a close election, it seems to me that could prove quite significant.”

That certainly seems the best result that Romney could hope for, but I wonder:

Sometimes this or that issue becomes a defining one for a politician and I wonder, if Obama plays it right or if it just happens otherwise whether this health-care business might not become so for Romney, negatively.

Negatively in that (1) there doesn’t seem to be any other issue upon which everyone can identify any clear, radical divergence he represents from Obama, and then (2) and then as to healthcare where Mit is out there bashing Obama it might come to very easily be viewed as showing Mit to be fundamentally hypocritical and thus just a shallow opportunist given his own plan in Massachusetts.

Plus of course health-care will still be a relatively fresh issue by November, and certainly still a big one.

If I was Romney then I’d certainly avoid wanting to talk about health-care any further, and if I was Obama I’d sure want to talk about it in that way. Especially since it plays so nicely in with what misgivings Mit already has seemed to inspire concerning his slickness, opportunism, lack of substance, sincerity….

Yeah, if I was Obama I think I’d want to hang Romneycare right around Mit’s neck as much as I could. For every vote I’d lose reminding people about my plan—which they won’t even feel yet—I think I’d be willing to bet I’d dissuade at least two others from pulling the lever for Mit.